The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has confirmed that the private medical insurance and protection insurance advice sectors will not form part of its Advice Guidance Boundary Review.
In last year’s Autumn Statement, chancellor Jeremy Hunt highlighted financial services as one of the UK’s five key growth sectors.
The subsequent Edinburgh Reforms announced in December of that year provided more detail on taking forward the government’s ambition for the UK to be the world’s most innovative and competitive global financial centre.
As part of the reforms, the chancellor announced that the government and the FCA would begin a joint review to examine the regulatory boundary between financial advice and other forms of support now known as the Advice Guidance Boundary Review.
But providing more detail about the Review in its Advice Guidance Boundary Review – proposals for closing the advice gap – policy paper this morning, the regulator confirmed general insurance, mortgages and debt advice are out of scope of the review.
The private medical and protection sectors sit within the general insurance category.
The FCA added: “This review focuses on the boundary between financial advice and guidance available for retail investments and pensions (which in this paper we refer to collectively as ‘support’).
“Within the investments and pensions sectors, the Review covers both accumulating assets (including general investment accounts (GIAs), individual savings accounts (ISAs) and pensions wrappers) and decumulating assets (including pensions decumulation).”
The regulator first revealed it would be reviewing the boundary between regulated financial advice and guidance across financial services in September last year.
And this past August it urged firms to provide “flexible forms of support” for customers and to “manage risk rather than eliminate it” as it reviewed the advice-guidance boundary.